This month on Film, Literature and the New World Order we’re joined by Will Morgan of The Sync Book to discuss Aldous Huxley’s final novel, Island. A philosophical exploration of Huxley’s imagined utopia, Island raises the question of what paradise looks like and how it can be achieved. Join James and Will for this exploration of the subject from two different viewpoints and discover more about Huxley’s most overlooked work.

Philip K. Dick was a hugely influential writer who drew upon his own life to address the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences of all kinds. He was a prolific author and many of his books were turned into popular films such as Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, and Minority Report. This book has been written with the cooperation of several close acquaintances and looks to examine his work as well as the socio-political-cultural environment in which he lived. It will be of great interest to any fan of Philip K. Dick or science fiction in general, as well as anyone who grew up the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Peake attempts to place Dick's extraordinary experiences known as 2-3-74 in a broader picture. He will also present fascinating evidence that Dick may have been, as he termed the state in many of his novels and short stories, a "precog" - a person that can see the future.

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Anthony Peake is a writer who deals with borderline areas of human consciousness. He graduated from the University of Warwick and the London School of Economics. His first book, Is There Life After Death? was published in 2006 and since then he has gone on to develop his own ideas together with exploring the latest areas of research in his field. His fourth book, Making Sense of Near-Death Experiences, is a collaborative effort with some of the world’s leading authorities on the near death phenomenon. He was very honoured to be asked to be one of the editors as well as contributing a chapter. His seventh book, A Life of Philip K Dick The Man Who Remembered the Future, is a departure from his previous works in that it is a mixture of biography, literary criticism and psychological/neurological analysis. His eighth book, provisionally entitled Personal Immortality? The Persistence of Consciousness Beyond the Brain, is a joint project with Professor Ervin Laszlo. This will be published in 2014.